Written by: sandeep-singh
2 min readNew DelhiApr 17, 2014 02:52 AM IST
First published on: Apr 17, 2014 at 02:52 AM IST
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) on Wednesday shortlisted nine fund houses to be appointed as the fund managers for managing the private sector funds within the National Pension System (NPS) and rejected the bid of HDFC Life. The insurer has, however, moved the Delhi High Court against the pension regulator’s decision.
The authority received 10 bids following its request for proposal that was issued on January 16.
“Bids from nine mutual funds have been accepted and that of HDFC Life was declined as it’s technical bid was rejected,” said a source close to the development.
HDFC Life has filed a writ petition with the Delhi High Court. A company official said that the Delhi High Court has directed PFRDA to reconsider the decision.
“HDFC Life had filed a Writ petition challenging the PFRDA’s request for proposal, the National Pension Scheme licence bid process and the wrongful disqualification/ rejection of HDFC Life’s bid,” said the insurer in a statement.
“Upholding our contentions, the Hon’ble Court has inter alia directed the PFRDA to open our technical bid along with bids of other bidders and evaluate the same in accordance with the law,” the company stated in its statement.
The lowest bid came from Reliance Mutual Fund as it offered to manage the funds at 1 paise per Rs 100 and therefore emerged as the L1 bidder.
As per the norm, all qualified bidders will now have to match the lowest bid in order to get the final approval from the pension funds regulator.
As per the schedule of activities mentioned in the request for proposal, the PFRDA will issue its letter of intent to selected sponsors on April 25.
Currently there are eight fund managers for the private sector the NPS and that includes HDFC Pension, ICICI Prudential, Reliance Capital, Kotak Mahindra, Life Insurance Corporation of India, State Bank of India, UTI and DSP Blackrock.
Tata Asset Management Company and Birla Sun Life are the two new players to have qualified this time.
As of May 2013, while the accumulated corpus of the National Pension Scheme stood ar Rs 32,567 crore, that of the private sector stood at Rs 1,529 crore.
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